James Gill: In crime and syllables, Illinois politicians win

Mark Carlson / The Associated PressIllinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, center, leaves his home through a back alley Wednesday, a day after he was arrested on federal corruption charges.

You'd have to give Illinois the lead in the dirty politics stakes; the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich pretty much ices it. Right now Louisiana and Illinois each has one former governor in prison, but that could not have been regarded as evidence of parity even before the feds rousted Blagojevich before dawn on Tuesday and took him downtown.

Our own Edwin Edwards had just taken up residence in the Baton Rouge mansion for the first time when former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, by then a federal court of appeals court judge, was sent to prison in 1973. Kerner was convicted of doing favors in return for racetrack stock when he was governor of Illinois from 1961 to 1968.

Edwards, after constitutional limits had forced him to step aside for four years, was in his third term when Daniel Walker was sentenced to the pen in 1987. Walker's crime was bank fraud, unconnected with his duties as Illinois governor from 1973 to 1977.

Edward's fourth term was history, and he was already in the pen, when Blagojevich succeeded George Ryan as governor in 2003. Ryan was convicted three years later of corruptly lining his pockets as secretary of state and then governor. He, like Edwards, sits in the pen hoping for a commutation before President Bush turns the White House over to Barack Obama.

To Blagojevich goes the distinction of being charged with a crime while still in office, although Richard Leche, the only Louisiana governor apart from Edwards to have been sent to prison, may have avoided that fate only by resigning in 1939. Leche cited the old standby, "health reasons, " and was convicted of huge graft a year later.

Governors are not the only measure of official corruption, but Illinois more than holds its own as you go all the way down the scale to light-fingered municipal and county functionaries. At the federal level, Louisiana does have soon-to-be-ex-Congressman Bill Jefferson to brag on, but he has not even been convicted yet.

Illinois's Dan Rostenkowski, on the other hand, for years one of Washington's really big dogs, went to prison too. In fact, that's where he was when Blagojevich won his old seat in the House of Representatives in 1996. Those Chicago pols sure got us beat on syllables.

To judge from the feds' allegations against Blagojevich, Illinois' crooked politicians do not have ours beat for brains. The feds did catch both Edwards and Jefferson on tape, but our guys were unawares.

Blagojevich, who has seen his approval ratings dive as more and more sordid deals came to light in recent years, knew that the feds were on his tail and once warned an aide in his office not to use a phone because "the whole world is listening." He got that right. The feds had the joint bugged. They had his home phone tapped too.

Surely everyone knows that's how the feds conduct an investigation. But Blagojevich proceeded to hang himself, yakking away and giving the feds all they needed to charge him with soliciting bribes and plotting mail and wire fraud.

The day before his arrest he assured reporters that all his actions were lawful and that anyone was welcome to tape him "publicly or privately."

They locked Earl Long up for going crazy when he was governor of Louisiana, but he was a model of discretion compared with Blagojevich.

Blagojevich's notion that, because Obama's old Senate seat was in his gift, he could parlay it into a Cabinet post or ambassadorship is strongly suggestive of delusion. He was radioactive long before the feds came calling, as he appeared to recognize when floating the idea of grabbing the U.S. Senate seat for himself as a way of avoiding impeachment by the Illinois legislature.

He also let it be known that he wouldn't mind heading up the Red Cross on account of there's plenty of money to be made in the charity business.

Wherever Blagojevich ended up, we may be sure he would not have been a great champion of the First Amendment. His reaction to negative commentaries was to demand the Chicago Tribune fire the offending hacks on pain of forfeiting state aid in the sale of the Cubs baseball franchise.

So Blagojevich emerges from the federal version of events as not only crooked, but dumb and vindictive. We know when we're whipped.

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James Gill is a staff writer. He can be reached at 504.826.3318 or at jgill@timespicayune.com.